The present invention relates generally to a high voltage shunt voltage regulator, using a linear FET amplifier which operates at voltage levels of up to tens of thousands of volts with power dissipation capabilities in the kilowatt range.
There are known shunt voltage regulators using cascode techniques, in which the higher stages require a direct reference to the lower stage. This direct reference becomes quite complicated when using more than two or three devices.
United States patent references of interest include No. 3,623,140 to Nercessian, which shows a plurality of power supplies connected in cascade and interconnected in such a manner as to provide that they share the load in predetermined ratios. Overall stability is determined substantially solely by the characteristics of the master supply. U.S. Pat. No. 4,429,416 to Page is concerned with differential amplifier stages cascaded in a directly coupled configuration. The patented circuit acts not only as an IF amplifier, but also as a signal limiter. A limiter amplifier with cascade-connected differential amplifier stages is also shown in Oda et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,495,429. Summer in U.S. Pat. No. 3,551,788 describes a high voltage transistorized stack, and Schaefer in U.S. Pat. No. 4,400,660 shows a high voltage power supply regulator combined with a modulator. A voltage regulator which includes a differential amplifier is described in Streit et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,946,303.